Linker was already nerfed and it’s completely ok for pve now. Joint penalty used to make all the 5 monsters linked take 5 times the damage, now it’s only 2 times.
As for pvp, not only linker but many other skills need to be changed, and I agree that joint penalty on a 5 members party + hangman’s knot is something completely absurd and OP, but they don’t need to nerf the skills to achieve balance there. They could limit their use in some way on a pvp/gvg cenario without changing the pve effect.
Don’t misunderstand, I don’t think that wizard is a weak class that won’t survive if linker gets nerfed. Not every wizard gets linker c1, there are a lot of cryomancers that get to c3 without linker, a lot of pyros that get to c3 without it as well. There are even wizards who go cryo + psycho and no linker.
Maybe your point is that mobs linked get completely obliterated by a party and it’s no fun, but is the problem really the linker skills? Maybe the reason for the obliteration is the insane damage that some players in the party are doing because of unbalanced stats and skills and the result would be the same without the link bonus damage, or maybe that’s just how the game works when there are a lot of monsters together on a small area and 5 people hit them.
If this monster gathering is the real problem, using skills like frost pillar ou swash buckling instead of hangman’s knot would have the exact same “OP” effect, they can even gather more than 5~8 monsters.
IMC is well aware of how wizards can escalate quickly to become OP with the new classes to come, that’s why 3 of their circles got nerfed, but not linker.